Generation Next Is a Boomer for Arizona

Generation Next Is a Boomer for Arizona

Article excerpt

We always hear what's wrong with college basketball. Billy
Packer huffs, puffs and pontificates. Dick Vitale speaks in tongues
and flaps his arms like a wounded seagull.

Everything is wrong. It is terrible. What is happening to the
college game? There are no seniors. If only more players stayed for
four years, the way Tim Duncan, Keith Van Horn and Jacque Vaughn
did.

But now? With these ungrateful kids leaving school early for
the National Basketball Association?
These spoiled kids don't know how to play. The kids are ruining
the game, hurting the universities, giving the coaches headaches.
To the TV shills, every coach is a genius. Every victory is a
coaching masterpiece. No coach should ever be fired. The coaches
never lose games. The players never win the games.
It is always the coach, and his IQ, that gets it done.
The coaches are Einstein. They are the Magi.
And to that I say:
Thank you, Arizona.
Thanks for exploding the Senior Myth.
Thanks for being so inexperienced, so fresh, so full of life,
so unafraid of challenging and imposing moments.
Arizona plays no seniors. Arizona starts a freshman, a
sophomore and three juniors. The first three players off the bench
are a freshman and two sophs. Coach Lute Olson is old enough to be
their grandpa.
"We're young," freshman point guard Mike Bibby said. "And we're
good."
Where are the seniors?
Mostly gone. Of the 20 players who started for the Final Four
teams that competed Saturday, only five were seniors. Six were
juniors, eight were sophomores and one was a freshman.
Generation X has snatched the ball and taken over. And college
basketball, miraculously, has survived. Can you believe it?
Arizona, a No. 4 seed, advanced to Monday's NCAA Championship
Game vs. Kentucky by rudely eliminating North Carolina 66-58 at RCA
Dome.
These kids should show more respect for their elders.
They sent the legendary Dean Smith home.
Deano became Carolina's coach the same year (1961) that John F.
Kennedy was sworn in as president. Dean started coaching before the
Beatles became a popular Rock n' Roll band. And Smith - one of the
greatest coaches in the game's history - lost to a team that
listens to hip-hop music.
At least Miles Simon tried to be polite in a chat with Smith
after the game.
Once upon a time, he wanted to play for Carolina. It was his
boyhood dream. But Smith wrote him a letter and said, sorry, but we
have plenty of guards. So Simon went to Arizona and is a junior now.
"I just told Coach Smith at the end, that it was a pleasure
playing against them," Simon said. "And just wished them, like, the
best of luck."
Oh, those crazy Arizona kids. Last week they played a cruel
teen-age prank on Kansas, upsetting the No. 1 Jayhawks in the round
of 16.
This, in turn, upset Packer, who talks during the games on CBS. …